Way back in April a jury agreed with TiVo that EchoStar willfully infringed upon TiVo's patent for a "multimedia time-warping system." Then crickets for the last 4 months as the two battled it out in both the court of public opinion and at a bench trial where TiVo requested a permanent injunction against the provider of the DISH Network. Well, the ruling is in and EchoStar must pay TiVo an initial award of about $90 million and must disable all infringing DVR functionality within, oh, 30 days -- we're talking switching off the DVR functionality of four million users. Ouch! Oh, and EchoStar can't sell new boxes, either. Is it just us or does little TiVo seem to be extra smiley this morning?[Thanks to everyone who sent this in, via Zatz Not Funny]
Update: EchoStar is definitely going to attempt to stay the injunction (they'd be fools not to) -- more on that as it develops!
Read - Reuters coverage
Read - EchoStar's response